Saami Linguistics

Saami linguistics was established as a major academic subject of its own in 2004 when Saami language and Saami cultural studies culture were split into two major subjects. The main research effort of the staff before the split was a linguistic one so that in fact Saami linguistics is a continuation of the old subject and inherited its staff from it. The linguistic research in the Giellagas Institute consists of individual projects and covers both historical and synchronic research into the Saami languages, mainly North Saami, Inari Saami and Skolt Saami. The contributions of the staff in Uralic historical linguistics have been important.

In Saami linguistics, one of the strong points of the Giellagas Institute is the broad scope of its research which covers both diachronic and synchronic aspects of language, and the choice to use and develop realistic and substance-orientated research approaches such as functional dependency grammar instead of speculative ones such as the different versions of generative grammar. In spite of a long tradition, there are lots of uncovered or poorly covered areas of research and the Giellagas Institute aspires to chart these with broad basic research in order create comprehensive systematic knowledge and in order to develop a balanced teaching program with an adequate coverage of the different aspects of language usage, structure, semantics, variation and history.

The need for pervasive basic research also means that it is not useful to concentrate the research activities of the staff or those of the students into single-theme projects engaging several researchers and that individual projects are preferred. Because of the need to proceed along a multitude of lines simultaneously many of the individual projects have been going on for several years but they will lead to publications of important monographs in the near future. In linguistics, a representative and comprehensive corpus is much needed and the lack of it is a weakness but the problem is likely to be solved in cooperation with the language technology project at the University of Tromsø, Norway.